Phil Stott

Phil Stott is a Vault Editor. Since joining Vault in 2007, he has covered a variety of industries including consulting, consumer products and technology. He is also well-versed in general career issues, having worked in a variety of fields including freelance journalism, consumer banking, English language teaching, soccer coaching and more. Originally from Scotland, he holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature and Modern History and a Masters in Research in Civil Engineering.

All Posts by Phil Stott

The issues of equal rights and pay for women in the workplace have
been making headlines in recent weeks, along with the related issue
of parental leave and benefits. In the next few days, I'm going to
be focusing on those issues in a series of posts examining Vault's
Consulting Survey data from a gendered perspective, as well as
taking a look at the life of a female employee who has struggled
with the demands of the industry that has been at the center of
much of the diversity debate of...
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Maybe it's the office hopping lifestyle? When it comes to office
romance, consultants are one of the most permissive groups of
employees around. Just 1% of consultants who took our office
romance survey indicated that they thought romances between
coworkers were never acceptable, while 31% claim that any kind of
office fling is acceptable-even those between bosses and
subordinates. That's substantially more relaxed than the average
respondent in our survey-overall, 5% believed all office...
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Over the past few months, we've featured a number of pieces
focusing on the internship program at Northwestern Mutual-a program
that consistently emerges as one of the top internships in the
country in our annual ranking. To date, we've looked at everything
from how the firm creates the internship experience to how they
reward interns, and what it's like to actually be an intern there.
For many, however, the true mark of a great internship isn't just
the things you learn or the connections...
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"We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some
very hard times." The central theme of the domestic portion of
President Obama's penultimate State of the Union speech last night
was all about the progress the economy has made since the darkest
days of the recession, coupled with a few ideas-most of which are
unlikely to make it through Congress alive-about where to go from
here. The speech made a strong pitch for "middle class
economics"-the idea that crafting economic...
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Can the Job Market Party Continue in 2015? The final employment
report of 2014 is out, and it's official: last year was the best
for US job growth since 1999. All told, the economy added some
252,000 jobs listing month, bringing the unemployment rate down to
5.6 percent-a 1.1 percent drop over the course of the past year.
The gains rounded off a strong year for the job market, with the
BLS reporting an average monthly gain of 246,000 positions in 2014.
Those figures translated to some 1.7...
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The past couple of days have brought a rash of headlines about
union victories at the National Labor Relations Board-most of which
are based on decisions that the NLRB has made that theoretically
make it easier for workers to form unions. And most of those
articles have been accompanied by quotes from individuals and
lobbyists on either side of the debate, touting the rulings either
as spelling certain doom for businesses or a jolt in the arm for
workers' rights. (Nuanced discussion of the...
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If you've been paying attention to the news in the past few days,
you'll likely have heard something about a data security breach at
Sony Pictures-not least because the hack has resulted in several of
Sony's current and upcoming movie titles being leaked onto the
internet, potentially costing the company millions of dollars in
lost revenue. As bad as that may seem, the full extent of the data
involved in the hack is still not apparent, and the worst effects
of it may not even be revenue...
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In recent weeks, I have focused on the internship program at
Northwestern Mutual-a firm that has featured in our list of our Top
10 internship programs every year since its inception. We have seen
what goes into making the program, and also found out what it's
like to participate in the program. To complete this exclusive look
inside the firm, this week and next, I will be sharing interviews I
conducted with a current Northwestern Mutual intern, and a
full-time advisor at the firm who made...
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With around 9 million unemployed people in the country, you'd think
that U.S. firms would have no problem filling the 3 million or so
open positions that are currently available. But you'd be wrong:
despite the 3 to 1 ratio of jobseekers to unfilled jobs, many firms
can't find people with the requisite skills to fill the positions
they have. As a new report points out, that's not just a problem
for those firms-the mismatch is causing the entire economy to
cover. A report titled Bridge the...
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As a consistent member in our list of top internship programs, it's
fair to say that Northwestern Mutual must be doing something right.
Here, we take a look at some of the answers from Northwestern's
respondents on this year's internship experience survey. What they
have to say underlines just how highly-regarded the program is.
Highlights Before we get down to the details, here are some
of the best bits of the Northwestern Mutual internship experience,
as told to us by the most recent...
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